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Food is an indispensable and important part of human daily life.
Chinese food culture has a long history, broad and profound, self-contained, and the understanding and production of sweet food has diversity and particularity, which is not only reflected in regional differences, but also in the fluidity of history.
Due to its special social and historical conditions, the material and cultural achievements of the Song Dynasty in honey diet occupy an extremely important position in the history of Chinese food.
So, why are the Song people so obsessed with honey-made food, and where does the sugar come from?
1. The development background of honey diet in the Song Dynasty
(1) The development of agricultural science and technology
1. Beekeeping industry
Honey is an important raw material for honey diet, and it is the sugar raw material that has the most direct and significant impact on honey diet.
In the Song Dynasty, after the accumulation and development of the theoretical and practical experience of the previous generation of bee domestication, the beekeeping industry technology has made considerable progress.
At the level of bee theory, the Song people have a relatively systematic scientific understanding of bees, and accordingly realized some technological innovations in beekeeping practice.
"The king is not poisonous, does not know anything else", "the beginning of the nest, must build one, its big as chestnut, commonly known as the king platform" is the understanding of the status of the queen bee and the structure of the hive, according to which the queen bee can be controlled to manage the bee colony, and create a suitable scientific beehive for the bee colony.
"Bees are also divided. or the group is like a poppy, or it is spread like a fan, and it goes away with its king. Where the king is, the bee does not dare to sting, and if the king is lost, it will be chaotic" is an observation and record of the phenomenon of natural bees.
On the basis of this understanding, "the predecessors passed on the honey, and the descendants Bing Ai", first using honey to lure the bees, then through wormwood smoke to drive the bees into the cloth sac, and finally brought to a new artificial beehive to continue breeding."
Science has improved the efficiency of bee harvesting. "Whoever takes more of its honey shall not take much, and if there is more, the bees will be hungry and will not come to the fish. It is indispensable, and if it is less, the bee will be lazy and not do it" is a summary of the principle of taking the right amount of honey.
The ancestors of the Song Dynasty observed and understood bees and hives in labor practice.
It deepened the understanding of all aspects of bee Xi, vigorously promoted the progress of honey production technology in the Song Dynasty, led to a double harvest of honey yield and quality, and provided sufficient raw materials for various honey diets.
2. Grain production
A large part of the honey diet is a staple food with honey flavor, so the influence of grain production in the Song Dynasty on the development of honey diet cannot be ignored.
After the progress of food production has met the basic survival needs of most people, people have been able to carry out the production and consumption activities of honey diet.
Due to the maturity of the seedling sowing and water-drought rotation technology in the Song Dynasty, the rice-wheat multiple cropping system and the double cropping system were extended to most areas in the south and became a common farming system in the staple grain areas of the south.
Moreover, the Song Dynasty also introduced drought-tolerant Champa rice from Vietnam, which effectively alleviated the great impact of arid climate and soil on grain production in some areas.
The optimization of the farming system and the introduction of excellent crop varieties have greatly improved the land utilization rate and grain production. The improvement and creation of agricultural tools play the most direct role in promoting the development of food production.
"Due to the development of steelmaking technology and the progress of steel-filling smelting methods, the use of hard-edged iron agricultural tools has been gradually promoted. A device for a coulter was created on the plough, and a tower and a tread plough appeared in the hand tillage".
It improves the convenience and durability of tillage tools, and greatly improves the efficiency of agricultural production.
The popularization of irrigation tools such as cylinder carts and dumpers in the Song Dynasty facilitated the allocation of agricultural water under complex terrain and landform conditions, greatly saved manpower and material resources for agricultural irrigation, and promoted the development of agricultural productivity in the Song Dynasty.
3. Vegetable and fruit cultivation
Among the many food combinations, fruits and vegetables and honey are a wonderful pair, honey-preserved fruits and vegetables, and honey-based fruit and vegetable drinks are the best products in sweet diets.
"Tokyo Menghualu" records that "most of the capital is close to the left, all are gardens, within a hundred miles, there is no idle land", from the large planting area can be seen that the capital has a lot of demand for vegetables.
The cultivation and consumption of fruits are not inferior, taking lychee as an example, "Fuzhou is the most planted, extending the wilderness." Hongtang water west, especially prosperous.
There is one family, but as for ten thousand...... The water floats and the land turns to enter the Beijing division...... Therefore, the merchants sell a wide range of goods, and the villagers have a lot of seeds, and they don't know how many trillions of dollars come out of a year."
The Song Dynasty also emerged a variety of fruit and vegetable grafting techniques: "Cherry grafting anvil stalks, then into vertical silk." The pear tree is connected to the anvil stem, and it becomes the West House. Persimmon peach, then it is a golden peach. Plum and peach, then crisp. ...... Plum peach, then plum peach. If the mulberry is connected with the bayberry, it is not sour".
Production, consumption and technology promoted each other, and jointly promoted the increase of vegetable and fruit production, the enrichment of varieties and the improvement of taste in the Song Dynasty, laying a solid material foundation for the development of honey diet.
(2) The development of the commodity economy
The great emancipation of the productive forces and the implementation of the loose economic policy in the Song Dynasty provided a good soil for the prosperity of the commodity economy, and the honey diet developed rapidly under the unprecedented economic situation.
The development of the catering industry under the prosperity of the commodity economy is concentrated in the restaurants.
There are 72 restaurants in Tokyo, and the so-called main restaurants are large restaurants that not only have a large number and a magnificent scale, but also provide a rich variety of food and drink, delicious and fragrant, and entertain tens of thousands of diners every day.
Large-scale restaurants are still so prosperous, and the operation of "foot shops" between the houses is also rising, which together provide a vast consumption platform for honey diet, and promote the promotion and prevalence of honey diet. Nourished by a developed economy.
In the Song Dynasty, the citizen class gradually formed and grew, forming a personalized and refined concept of food consumption.
The growth of the citizen class has expanded the space for the development of secular culture and created a strong secular entertainment culture.
The honey diet is greatly favored and sought after because of its sweetness, nourishment and pleasant health.
Citizens with relatively favorable economic conditions hold personalized and refined consumption concepts to varying degrees, "more of them tend to be famous homes, such as the former family from the past, the market Wang Xuanxuan cake, and the Wangxian Bridge cake moose." Such as cheese noodles, there is only one point for the He family who sells crisp noodles in the back market."
"The consumer consciousness of 'branding' promotes healthy competition among the food and beverage industry, and the result is inevitably that sophisticated food and restaurants with various flavor characteristics will stand out."
This consumption fashion and concept of consumption became one of the carriages that drove the development of honey diet in the Song Dynasty, providing a steady stream of consumption driving force for the development of honey diet.
Second, the Song Dynasty honey diet
(1) Surface points
In the Song Dynasty, honey and flour collided to create a wide variety of delicacies, from the coarse tea and light rice of the lower class to the jade plate delicacies of the upper class, there is no lack of honey pastry.
"White cooked cakes" can be made only with starch, honey, water and noodles, kneaded and hammered and put into the oven, which is the use of bee products in the diet of ordinary people.
However, "'roll pancakes' require more than ten kinds of dried fruits, as well as lamb, green onions, ginger, etc.", which is obviously a snack on the table of wealthy families.
"Tokyo Menghualu" also records a honey-made pastry that is essential in wedding Xi, namely "honey and oil steamed cakes", which means that marriage is sweet and happy.
Although there are various types of honey pastries in the Song Dynasty, the use of honey in pastries is relatively simple, and most honey pastries are mixed with honey and water and oil to make noodles, and the pastries made by using honey in filling are still relatively rare.
(2) Pastries
As an important part of Chinese desserts, pastries were the most popular sweet snacks in the Song Dynasty, and most of the sweet concoctions used in them were honey. Glutinous cake was first seen in pre-Qin literature, and was still inherited and carried forward in the Song Dynasty, and prevailed.
"Wenchang Miscellaneous Records" mentions: "'Honey bait, there is some food. 'Basket, boiled with honey and rice flour. Gluttony, gluttony. Zhongshu Zhao She Renyun: 'Dialect bait cake also, today glutinous cake is'".
In addition to sticking to the traditional flavor of honey pastries in the Song Dynasty, a large number of new products inherited and improved also emerged at this time, among which Da Nai cake was more famous.
Da Nai cake was created by Xiang Chong, the prime minister of Song Zhenzong, and took the name of his predecessor Danai official position.
The specific method is to "peel and peel the core, blanch it with white plum and licorice soup, crush it with honey and pine nut meat, olive kernels, walnut flesh, and melon kernels, fill it up, and steam it into a small retort, which is called resistant cake."
Compared with the previous generation of honey pastries, new pastries of the Song Dynasty such as Danai cake are famous for their rich flavors, rich taste and exquisite shape.
(3) Vegetables and fruits honey stains
This is a food processing method unique to fruits and vegetables.
Fruits and vegetables processed through honey staining can remove water and absorb sugar through osmotic pressure, which can not only extend the storage life of perishable fruits and vegetables, but also improve the taste of vegetables and fruits such as acidic or tasteless, so they are popular with the public.
In the Song Dynasty, the cultivation of vegetables and fruits promoted the increase of vegetable and fruit production and varieties, and honey-pickled vegetables and fruits also developed into a representative product of honey-based diet.
In ancient China, the process of pickling vegetables and fruits with honey was called "frying", so the names of honey-pickled vegetables and fruits were mostly crowned with the word "fried", and the modern and contemporary "candied fruit" evolved from the word "honey fried" in the Song Dynasty.
In the Song Dynasty, honey-fried vegetables and fruits were generally referred to as "honey-fried fruits", and the common ones were honey-fried lychees, honey-fried kumquats, honey-fried bamboo shoots, honey-fried winter melons, honey-fried green apricots, honey-fried lotus roots, etc.
The practice of frying kumquat with honey is recorded in detail in the "Tangerine Record": "Citrus and kumquat can be cut into petals, do not leave it, press off the core, and soak it with honey." Kumquat is honey, especially better than others.
The villagers have sugar to boil oranges, called the medicine orange, the ash of the people is in the tripod, the color is black, can be far away. In addition, if the orange is slightly damaged, it will be peeled and placed in the stove with a meat petal, smoked with fire, and said that the orange is smoked, and it is placed in molasses, and the taste is also good."
It can be seen that the Song people also have a variety of practices for honey-soaked kumquats, which depend on the quality of kumquat and the efficacy of the finished product. In a large number of practices, the Song people even summed up the key to universal honey stains:
"Where the fried fruit, the most important thing is to follow its nature, sour, bitter, bitter, choking at will, boil it with half honey and half water, boil it for ten times, dry it by heat control, don't change it to pure honey, and put it into the silver stone cho.
Cook it again with a civil and military fire, take its color as the degree, put it into a new storage, seal it tightly, and do not let insects. It takes time to look at it again to feel the honey sour, and it is urgent to refine it with new honey."
The key points have made a detailed summary and explanation of the characteristics of vegetables and fruits, the heat and time of decoction, the use of utensils, and the precautions for sealing, which has certain reference significance for the promotion and large-scale production of honey-pickled vegetables and fruits in the Song Dynasty.
(4) Drinks
Honey drinks were one of the most important honey-based food products in the Song Dynasty. The Song Dynasty pushed honey wine to the forefront of the food trend on the basis of inheriting the legacy of the Tang Dynasty.
Only Su Shi, Su Zhe and their disciples have a number of poems singing about honey wine, which can see the popularity of honey wine in the Song Dynasty.
The most detailed record of its production method can be found in the Southern Song Dynasty's "Mozhuang Manlu": "Each four catties of honey is refined, and the cooked soup is stirred into a bucket, and two taels of good noodles and koji are entered."
One or two halves of the rice koji of the southern liquor cake, the Tao fine silk bag, all put in a vessel, sealed, cold in the heat of the summer, slightly cooler and warmer, cold and hot.
It boils on the first or second day, and boils for a few days, and the wine is clear and drinkable. At the beginning, the whole has the smell of honey, the half moon of the clear, it is a good wine, and half a catty of honey is refined when it is boiling, and the cold cast is especially wonderful.
Honey wine is sweet, and honey drink is sweet, suitable for women and children of all ages, especially in the hot summer, cool and sweet honey drink sales are excellent.
According to the "West Lake Old Man's Prosperity Record", Lin'an's midsummer cold drinks are:
"Pear syrup, coconut wine, papaya juice, soap water, sweet bean sugar, mung bean water, perilla drink, spleen shrinking drink, braised plum water, Jiang tea water, Wuling San, Da Shunsan, lychee paste, plum wine, white fire, lactose real snow."
Most of these drinks are infused with honey to add flavor, such as the famous lychee paste, which is a honey drink that has been commercially improved by the prescription, and the recipe can be found in the "Imperial Medicine Formula":
"Eight taels of black plum, ten taels of cinnamon, twenty-six taels of lactose, five taels of ginger (take juice), half a penny of musk, and fourteen taels of cooked honey."
There are many such drinks, but most of them are derived from prescriptions and are described in detail in the "Medicinal Diet" section.
(5) Medicinal diet
Due to the influence of the concept of "medicine and food are of the same origin", the boundary between food and medicine in ancient China was relatively blurred. Therefore, honey can be used as a flavoring agent in food and cooking, and can also be used as a medicinal herb in medicine to cure diseases.
The earliest record of the medicinal value of honey in ancient China was found in the Shennong Classic of Materia Medica, which elaborated on the taste, properties, medicinal value, and collection location of honey: "Wei Ganping.
The evil qi of the main heart, all convulsions, epilepsy, five treasures, all deficiencies, nourishing qi and replenishing the middle, relieving pain and detoxifying, eliminating all diseases, and a hundred medicines. Long-term service, strong ambition and light body, not hungry and not old. A stone syrup. Raw Valley".
In the Song Dynasty, the understanding of the medicinal properties and contraindications of honey was further deepened: "The soup burns, the pain of smearing is stopped, and the shallot is still pounded and white, although it is not toxic, eating more also gives birth to all winds."
With the improvement of the exploration of the value of honey in traditional Chinese medicine and the recognition of the efficacy of honey in clinical practice, the use of honey in medicinal diets has also increased.
According to incomplete statistics, there are hundreds of prescriptions that are used as honey, such as "tonifying the liver and taking Baiziren pills, raspberry pills, and treating liver stroke...... There are few sleeping lying formulas, dipterocarp pills, red arrow pills, and sour jujube kernel decoction formulas" and so on are all added with honey.
In addition to being officially used as a traditional Chinese medicine prescription for the treatment of diseases, honey is also included in many medicinal diet formulas with the functions of health preservation and disease prevention, and most of them are boiled and taken in the form of porridge.
For example, lily porridge, bamboo leaf porridge, horse eye porridge, Zou style yam porridge, etc., are all good products for nourishing the body, enriching people's dietary categories, improving the dietary experience, and promoting the development of health undertakings.
3. The basic development trend of honey diet in the Song Dynasty
(1) Song Dynasty honey system
The secularization of dietFrom the pre-Qin period, when the consumption of honey was first recorded, to the Northern and Southern Dynasties, many commoners were still hungry due to the underdeveloped productive forces.
Honey was mainly obtained from the wild, which obtained little and was extremely risky, so the consumption of honey or honey-based food was only part of the daily diet of the aristocracy.
The Sui and Tang dynasties were a transitional period from collecting wild honey to domestic honey collection, during which the scale of beekeeping industry expanded to a certain extent, and some simple honey pastries began to appear on the dining table of ordinary people.
However, at this time, the beekeeping industry was mostly distributed in the southern region, and due to the restrictions of transportation and storage conditions, honey and honey-based diet had not yet been popularized nationwide.
The great progress of agricultural technology in the Song Dynasty promoted the improvement of the output and quality of various raw materials for honey diet, and the prosperous commodity economy closely linked production and consumption.
A large number of honey-based foods with simple production processes and various small shops dealing in honey-based foods have emerged, all of which are manifestations of the secularization of honey-based food in the Song Dynasty.
Under the influence of secularization, in order to meet the needs of the public's different taste preferences, the honey diet of the Song Dynasty was gradually diversified and commercialized, with a wide variety of categories and crowded shops, which became a strong and colorful stroke in the history of Chinese food.
(2) The refinement of honey diet in the Song Dynasty
When honey diet became popular among the burghers, princes and nobles became more and more refined under the influence of cultural interests and driven by personal desires.
This trend is very obvious in the food materials, production process, appearance and shape, cultural connotation and other aspects.
The most famous is the Yunying noodles created by Zheng Wenbao, a literati of the Song Dynasty.
The ingredients used include lotus root, lotus, water chestnut, taro, chicken head (gourd), water chestnut, aunt, lily, honey, Sichuan sugar, etc. more than ten kinds, the cooking process is very particular: "choose the clean meat, rotten steaming, when the wind blows less, the stone mortar is pounded very fine."
Enter the Sichuan sugar, cooked honey, and then pound it, so that it can get along, and take it out to make a ball. Stop cold and hard, and cut food at will with a clean knife. More sugar is better. Honey whiskers are suitable".
The name "Yunying" is extremely elegant and exquisite, reflecting the noble aspirations of the literati and nobles of the Song Dynasty. In terms of appearance, different from the candied fruits of the commoners, the honey-pickled vegetables and fruits on the aristocratic banquet are called "carved nectar fried".
As the name suggests, it is carved out of various shapes on the basis of honey-fried fruits, giving a diverse cultural and artistic charm.
There is also a muffin cake is to be made of honey and pine yellow ambergris shape, the people of the time commented: "Drink and taste this, so that people sprinkle the joy of the mountains and forests, feel the hump, bear paws are downwind."
Although the refinement of honey diet in the Song Dynasty was a product of the extravagant life of the upper class, it also made a unique contribution to the systematization of Song Yun culture.
IV. Conclusion
Food may seem like a trivial matter in human daily life, but it can reflect all aspects and changes of social history.
The honey diet of the Song Dynasty is a product of history and at the same time the manifestation of history, which has also influenced history to a certain extent and shaped today's food culture.
The rapid progress of production technology in the Song Dynasty led to the development of productive forces, which in turn reflected the trend of the germination and growth of commodity economy in the production relations.
It is under the framework of such a macro logic of historical materialism that the homeopathic trend of honey-based diet, as a social micro level, has changed.
The categories of honey diet are constantly enriched, honey pastries, honey pastries, honey-pickled vegetables and fruits, honey drinks, honey medicinal diets, honey because of its sweet and nourishing characteristics in the Song Dynasty diet has been widely recognized, used and innovated.
The use of honey in the diet of the Song Dynasty is the result of historical shaping, so it must reflect the "traces of carving" of history. The secularization of honey food depicts the fiery life of the citizen class in the Song Dynasty under the development of the commodity economy.
The refinement of honey food highlights the purpose of Song Yun culture to form the elegant life of Chinese doctors.
Although the historical exploration of the honey diet in the Song Dynasty still needs to be improved and supplemented, it is enough to get a glimpse of the richness and connotation of the honey diet in the Song Dynasty, as well as the important position of the material and cultural achievements of the Song Dynasty honey diet in the history of mainland food.